China's Comeback

While the world still contemplates how impossible it is for China to solve its current economic problems, Warren H. Lau provides us with a solution: agricultural modernization and driving people into cities to absorb excess urban housing supply. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing real estate crisis, China faces a pivotal moment that defines its economic trajectory and role in the world. This book analyzes the country's current challenges, centered around a depressed property market and excess housing supply. It argues that strategic policy reforms focusing on agricultural modernization can spark revitalization. Through heavy investment in automation and technology to boost productivity on farms, China can wean itself off labor-intensive farming. This would spare millions of workers who could migrate to cities as new residents and occupants of the oversupplied urban real estate. With more human capital populating urban centers, demand for housing and domestic consumption of goods and services would rise. The book outlines how coordinating initiatives across infrastructure, public works, tourism, and development can convert rural economies, depopulate the countryside, and smoothly reallocate human resources. Such an orchestrated effort can relieve stresses in the property sector, stabilize the financial system, and increase urban population density. With a rebalancing of China's internal dynamics, strong ripple effects are plausible across global trade, investment, and economic cooperation.